The weblog of Irfan Yusuf, bush lawyer, humorist and award-winning author, once a small-c conservative but now politically left right out. His often irreverent take on things appears in some newspapers in Australia and New Zealand and online. His comic memoir "Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist" was published in May 2009 and won the Iremonger Award for Public Issues Writing.

Monday, August 18, 2008

OPINION: Justice the remedy required to help Bosnia heal ...

Radovan Karadzic, the murderous Sarajevo psychiatrist, was the architect of a brutal war in Bosnia Herzegovina during the mid-1990s that cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and that involved the gang rape of tens of thousands of women.

Karadzic masterminded the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II. His forces set up concentration camps where supporters of the Bosnian government were tortured, butchered and murdered.

In his memoir Enemy Combatant, former British Guantanamo inmate Moazzam Begg describes meeting a Bosnian Muslim refugee who was gang raped in the presence of her husband and with their three-month old baby screaming. Soon after the rape her husband was shot and her baby decapitated, all in her presence.

The bulk of Karadzic's victims were indigenous Bosnians who did not fit into the categories of "Serb" or "Croat" and whose ancestral faith was Islam. Of course, this did not make Bosnia a Muslim state in any theocratic sense. To be Muslim was more an ethnic than religious feature. Hence, the expulsion of Muslim and Croat populations by Karadzic's forces was appropriately referred to as "ethnic cleansing".

Indeed, when it declared its independence from the Yugoslav federation on March 1, 1992, Bosnia was a country of three large ethnic minorities - Muslim, Serb and Croat. Members of all three communities supported Bosnian independence. Politicians from all three communities formed the Bosnian government. Soldiers from all three communities fought to defend Bosnia's independence and territorial integrity.

Bosnia Herzegovina was established by Europeans who included Muslims not wanting a uniformly Islamic or theocratic state but rather a genuinely modern pluralist European state. Muslims showed their commitment to European values and liberal democracy.

And for this, they were rewarded with genocide and an arms embargo that crippled this young state's ability to defend itself. Karadzic rejected that pluralist vision and fought it using violence reminiscent of the worst excesses of Nazi Germany. He received international support by default in that the world refused to lift an arms embargo and so deprive Bosnia's army of weapons it needed to defend itself.

To describe the newly established republic of Bosnia back in the 1990s as a Muslim country was and remains an absurdity. At least 30 per cent of Bosnians had ethnically and religiously mixed parentage. One tragic image of the war was two young lovers, a Bosnian Serb boy, Bosko Brkic, and his Bosnian Muslim girlfriend, Admira Ismic, gunned down by Serb snipers while attempting to flee Sarajevo. They died in each other's arms. Their funeral service was attended by both families and friends, and included elements of both Orthodox Christian and Muslim liturgy.

Yet if Karadzic's war actually achieved anything arguably positive for his foes, it was putting indigenous European Islam on the world map. This was an Islam happy to live in (and indeed lead) a genuinely pluralist society. The central square of Sarajevo, once Europe's oldest centre of Islamic learning, still has the houses of worship of four communities (a synagogue, a mosque, an Orthodox and a Catholic church).

It's a bitter irony. For many non-Western Muslims and Muslim migrants living in Western countries, the existence of Bosnian Islam first hit their radar via the images of imams leading the funeral prayers of children shot by Karadzic's snipers or cut to pieces by shrapnel fired by Karadzic's forces. For many of us, Bosnian Islam became a reality at a time when it faced extermination.

Countries like Bosnia and Kosovo serve as reminders that Islam is a European faith. If it were not so, large indigenous European Muslims would not exist in the heart of Europe.

I remember being told of an incident where an imam was invited to say a prayer at an interfaith service a few weeks following the September 11 attacks on the United States. The imam was Bosnian. A Muslim attending the service went up to the imam and asked why he was wearing European dress. "Because I am European," was the imam's reply.

For some Western Muslims, the message of the Bosnian war was clear. What point is there in trying to culturally integrate into Western societies? Integration didn't stop Bosnian Muslims from being slaughtered, raped and butchered. Muslims felt they were damned if they did and damned if they didn't ...

Karadzic may be in custody and awaiting trial but his sentiments and prejudices are alive and well.

The International Court of Justice has already described the Bosnian war as genocide, even if it deprived Bosnians of justice by refusing to rule in favour of Bosnia's application holding what is left of Yugoslavia responsible. Let's hope the International War Crimes Tribunal can deliver the justice Bosnia needs to heal.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer. An edited version of this article was first published in The Canberra Times on Monday 18 August 2008. Another version of this article was published on the same date in The New Zealand Herald.

UPDATE I: Queensland is an amazing place. But some Queenslanders continue to display the sort of disposition a certain deceased peanut farmer was famous for. Among them is this tasteless creature who views everything through the prism of masturbation. Read it and understand why modern medical science (as in psychopharmacology) cannot assist everyone.

8 comments:

It is probably a good idea to check your facts before you publish. Just a few glaring errors:

1. "...when it declared its independence ...on March 1, 1992, Bosnia was a country of three large ethnic minorities... Members of all three communities supported Bosnian independence."

Most Bosnian Serbs opposed independence, and wanted to keep the country in the Yugoslav federation. Muslims and Croats insisted, and held an independence referendum in Feb-Mar 92, which was boycotted by a great majority of Serbs. Turnout was something like 64 percet - 2 percent below the minimum required by the federal constitution then in effect.

2. "The leader of a militia that murdered over half a million people and set up Europe's first concentration camps since World War II has finally been captured."

Radovan Karadzic was not a militia leader, but the president of the Republika Srpska - the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. He was not one bit less legitimate a political leader than any of the Shiptars in Kosovo - except he failed where they succeded.

The number of victims of the war in Bosnia is an order of magnitude less than Yusuf claims. According to a fairly unbiased source (Research and Dcoumentation Center - www.idc.org.ba) the total is 97,000 - Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, others all together. And about half of them soldiers and militia - much better ratio, than the usual 10 civilians to one soldier.

3. The ICJ did NOT declare, that the war in Bosnia was a genocide. It said Srebrenica was one (and that was one hell of a stretch, too). You are a lawyer - you should know the difference.

1. There were many Serbs who boycotted the independence vote. But that doesn't mean the majority of Serbs in Bosnia opposed independence.

2. Karadzic was a murderer and a war criminal. He was head of a false entity that wasn't recognised by any but a small handful of mainly Orthodox Christian nations. You have provided no source for the casulty figures you quoted.

3. If Srebrenica was genocide, the slaughter of Serbs, Croats and Muslims in the rest of Bosnia by Karadzic's goons was a genocide multiplied many times over.

The Serb boycott was close to 100 pecent. What does that mean? They did not oppose independence, but did not want to say so? Or what?

"Karadzic was ..."

Perhaps he was. But as soon as the handcuffs clicked on his wrist, he became an innocent man, whose guilt has to be proven. Which - based on the total fiasco of the Milosevic trial and the hard time they are having with Seselj - may not be a very easy job.

"You have provided no source for the casulty figures you quoted."

Research and Dcoumentation Center in Sarajevo (www.idc.org.ba). It is there. Read more carefully.

"...genocide multiplied many times over..."

Rubbish. The Bosniaks tried that, and the ICJ did not buy it. Even the ICTY (which is not exactly a Serb-friendly forum) says only Srebrenica qualifies.

You have to remember the circumstances - they add up to a perfect storm:

1. Srebrenica was a big thorn in the side of the RS army, tying down forces that were needed elsewhere.2. The garrison (28th division, under Nasir Oric) kept shelling the Serb positions from the city, from under the cover of UN protection.3. Oric's men kept raiding the surrounding villages, killing the local Serb civilians in numbers that were just small enough to remain under the attention-treshold of the rest of the world. (The total was something like 3,000.)4. The Serbs in the units surrounding the town were mostly locals, and they knew very well, that their families were being butchered. 5. Izetbegovic needed a major incident, with significant casualties, in order to obtain active support from US, NATO, UN.5. The Bosniaks were brave, but not very competent.

When the Serbs finally had enough and pushed into the city (a small force of about 200 infantry and a few tanks), the Bosniaks broke, and started fleeing. The Serbs pursued, killing a large number in a running fight. Other Serbs got out of hand, and killed another large number, who had already given up.

War brings out the best and the noblest in some people, and the worst in others. In Srebrenica it brought out the worst. It was a serious case of indiscipline and dereliction of duty, but I do not think that anybody ordered it at all.

And if you think otherwise, you are not alone. But now that RK is in the Hauge, it is not enough to THINK otherwise - it has to be PROVEN. Which is much more difficult, than running a slick propaganda operation to demonise the Serbs.